Getting Your Insurance Sorted Out

It's one of those things that no one really likes to think about: that none of us will live forever. However, while the single with no dependents might simply have to accept this ugly fact about life and its end, those either married or with dependents do need to think a little more about matters.

If you were to die, would your partner be able to keep on living the life they are accustomed to? Would your children still have enough money for college and so on?

This is what the insurance business is all about, insuring against such risks. Here there's two major types of it. For example, 20 year term life insurance. This involves you paying a premium each month for the 20 year term and if you should be unfortunate enough to die in that period then your dependents get taken care of.

There's also with profits insurance, where in return for a higher premium you get not just he life cover but also a savings plan: some of the money you pay over is invested and comes back to you.

The real point about these forms of insurance is that if you're going to get it, you need to get quotes from a number of different suppliers. Like, say, AIG term insurance or Prudential term insurance. Only by looking at what the market has to offer can you be sure of getting the best deal.

Nanny Cameras

Now here's something of a conundrum over the appropriate uses of a nanny camera.

Well, to start with of course there's the use for which a nanny camera was designed. So that you can see what said nanny is doing when you're out of the house. Is she entertaining her boyfriend upon the couch while your child struggles in the bath? Or is she taking care of the little darlings in the way you want?

But then we find ourselves wandering off into rather more controversial uses for a nanny camera. Let's imagine that she was rather hot and was indeed entertaining her boyfirend? Is this something you would then watch? And would that be with or without your wife then?

To get to really extreme uses, what if she was indeed hot and was willing to entertain you on the couch? Something to show the wife or not?

Hmm, these things can become a little complicated, can't they?

Marketing Programs

It's a few years since I was involved in this industry but it's still true, the basics of it. The value of any marketing campaign depends upon how tightly you target your advertising. There's no point in your trying to advertise cars either to non-drivers or those too poor to afford one, no point in advertising diapers to those without children.

So the start of any campaign has to be the aquisition of a target list, for example, a marketing list. I recall one campaign we ran where our targets were solicitors (one of the two types of lawyer in England). The customer expected us to use the phone book and simply call every advert in it....we argued that to be a solicitor you had to, by law, be a member of the Law Society. So we shoud use the Law Society membership list, which is what we actually did.

Now not every list of mailing leads is as easy to discover as that: which is why for most such you'll probably want to go to a list broker, they collect and collate these for a specialty.

For example, there's no simple way of collating your own mortgage mailing list so why not click through any of the links and see what the specialists can do for you?

The Breast Form Boutique

So here is something a little different for the discerning shopper. The Breast Form Boutique. It describes itself as all you need to "become the woman you've always wanted to be". Umm, no, it's not aimed at the female audience either. Rather, at those who are not female but rather wished they were.

Yes, it's a shop for everyone from the cross-dresser through to the pre-surgery transexual. Not quite my cup of tea but I do find it fascinating that they say that they've been catering to the cross dressing community since the early 1900's...it's been going on that long?

Still, an interesting selection of goods, many just what you might think of: buttock enhancers, emulating the feminine deposits of adipose tissue, and some you might not have. Who, for example, would have thought that someone made a prosthetic pudendum?

Still if that's what floats your boat, go for it.

Furnishing the House

As regular readers will know we're in hte process of dealing with this new (to us) house and now that we've got most of it done we are approaching the final part of stage one. The final part of one half of the house that is.

We've got the builders coming in with the kitchen and utlitly room stuff! Yay!. Already bought almost all of the necessary bits and pieces, only one more to go. The washing machine. So given my dislike of going shopping (I've been known to walk into a store, see something and say "I'll have that", rather than bothering to compare things) I've been casting around the web for places that will sell me a washing machine.

And I've got to say, these guys at Wize seem to do a pretty good selection in the washing machine line. The prices are good as well: they compare very favourably with the other sites I've seen. Of course, there is still a gender difference in how these things work: I'm certainly not going to be allowed to simply buy one. That will be the decision of the wife. No, not because I'm a sexsist pig but because that's just the way things work around here. I'm not allowed to buy anything important without her say so: for precisely the reason mentioned above, I'll buy the first thing I see.

Still, at least I know where to point her now, which website she'll get to choose from.

Structured Settlements

This is a little understood part of the financial world, the way in wihch you can sell a structured settlement. Another word for the same practice (although with subtle differences) is viaticals.

OK, so that's made no sense to anyone at all. Think of it this way. You get an insurance payout say, or have a pension being paid to you perhaps. But instead of that weekly or monthly check you'd prefer to have the money in one lump sum now. A more formal description is here.

Essentially what you're doing is trading a stream of payments for a lump sum now. The buyer of the stream of payments and the provider of the lump sum is doing the opposite of course. Again, you can click here for more details.

But if this is something that you want to do how do you actually go about it? How do you make sure that you're getting a good deal? One suggestion would be that you start with Settlement Quotes LLC. Click through there to see their site. If you tell them of the details of your structured settlement they'll be able to get you quotes on what the lump sum will be.

Thomas Delgado

No, really, this is taking the piss. He cannot be serious about this, can he? Really?

A Spanish driver who collided with a cyclist is suing the dead youth's family $29,300 for the damage the impact of his body did to his luxury car, a Spanish newspaper reported on Friday.

Businessman Tomas Delgado says 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo caused $20,500 of damage to his Audi A8 in the fatal 2004 crash in La Rioja region, the El Pais newspaper reported.

Delgado, who has faced no criminal charges for the incident, wants a further 6,000 euros to cover the cost of hiring another vehicle while his car was being repaired, El Pais said.

The youth had been cycling alone at night without reflective clothing or a helmet, according to a police report cited by El Pais.

I mean I laughed when I read it: but not that funny laughter, that one you get when someone tells you a good joke.

No, the disgusted kind, the "Awwww, noooo" and then a chuckle. It's not enough to kill the kid (and the driover has already been found at fault for driving too fast that night), he's claiming damages about the incident. He might even have a case in law but no, this is simply not the behaviour of a gentleman.

The Truth About Martial Arts

Now this really looks rather interesting, a site that attempts to tell us the truth about martial arts. Put out of your mind for a moment all that rubbish about Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, unless you're willing to spend 15-20 years training up you're not going to get anywhere near to that level of skill: and you certainly won't be able to do retakes like they could.

So a much more sensible idea would be to take a free road test of the close combat training system offered by world expert Chris Prizzo. He's a world leader in self defense (which is of course what you want to know about. You're not interested in balletic kicks and makingyourself look good, you want to know how to disable an attacker for long enough that you can get away) and as I sway, you can test his system for free just by clicking through one of those links.

So why not try it out? Captain Chris' close combat, nothing to lose and a great deal to gain.

Joyriding

So, you're a convicted car thief and joyrider. You've got to go to a special class for convicted car thieves and joyriders. Yes? Got the basic set up? It's also freezing cold out there and you've got no transport except shank's pony. So, what do you do? Got it yet?

A group of teenage car thieves took a joy ride to a court-ordered counseling program aimed to keep them away from stealing cars, Winnipeg police said on Tuesday.

The four suspects, aged 16 and 17, were attending the counseling program in the Canadian prairie city as part of a court order relating to previous auto thefts, said Detective Sergeant Kevin Kavitch of the city's stolen-autos unit.

A local newspaper suggested the teens had stolen the car because it was "too cold to walk" to their court ordered training program, although Kavitch described it as a crime of opportunity. Winnipeg daytime temperatures dipped to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 Fahrenheit) last week, with wind chill.

Yup, that's right, you steal a car to go to your class on how much of a naughty buy you are for stealing cars.

Honestly, some people.

Matchmaking Service Reviews

Yes, we've all got used to using internet personals to spice up the possibilities of our love and romantic life. But thie thing is, it's really rather difficult to work out which of the sites to use. There are so many of them, some geared to such tiny niches as to be valueless to most, others so general that finding someone special on them would be impossible. And paying to join all of them to test them would be ruinously expensive.

Fortunately, as is so often true, markets have a way of solving these problems: someone steps in to offer you a guide throuh the various options. Which is exactly what this matchmaking service site does, offering reviews of the different sites. For example, here's their Chemistry.com review and here's the Lavalife review.

If you're thinking of joining in the internet datin revolution, it's an extremely useful site telling you where it might be best for you, with your own special interests, to start.

Whoa!

Jokes are copyright now?

"Tonight Show" host Jay Leno got the last laugh Wednesday in his legal battle with the creator of numerous joke books filled with stolen gags and punch lines.

The publishers of such compendiums as "Jokes to Go," "Comedy Thesaurus" and "The Funny Pages" vowed to immediately stop printing and distributing the books in a settlement with Leno and fellow comedians who sued author Judy Brown.

Under the legal deal announced by Leno's lawyers, Brown and her publishers also agreed to pay monetary compensation, and she apologized to the entertainers whose jokes she copied. Financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

That's a very weird decision indeed. Most odd. You can copyright writing, of course, and you can copyright music, but a stand up joke? I'm not really sure how that decision cvould have been reached. Most especially as so much comedy is in the timing of the telling, the method of expression, rather than the jokes themselves. Sorry, I don't understand this.

Leno acknowledged much of the material attributed to him originated with his "Tonight Show" writing team.

"On behalf of the tremendous and talented group of writers we have at 'The Tonight Show' and many other hard-working comedians, I'm very glad we've been able to stop this practice once and for all," he said in a statement.

OK, that I understand: he's paid good money for those jokes and doesn'twant someone to use them without paying him. But I still don't understand the legal basis of the ruling.

Cheap Office Supplies

OK, so we all know how to save money using coupons on the things we buy for home: that's not to difficult, you simply get the local newspaper and clip out the coupons. As and when you go shopping you use the coupons and save the money. Very good, all very simple.

However, it's rather more difficult to work out where to find the coupons you might be able to use on office supplies and business products. The local newspaper is unlikely to carry them, after all. It's also very tough to find out where you can get coupons and discount codes for the online stores. After all, you can't send the paper coupons down your modem, can you?

Which is what makes this site so great. They're into cheap office supplies, discount business furniture and deals on computer printer ink cartridges and their site does just what it says on the tin there. They help you find the good deals which are out there on your office and business supplies. How they do this is also delightfully simple.

They maintain a database of the online coupons and discount codes that are available. For example, here are their WalMart coupons and their Office Depot discounts. So if you're about to buy something from those (or many other) stores, you simply go to their site and see whether they can save you money. And it's all free, of course.

And even better, you don't have to scour the newspapers, nor clip anything out of them. Well worth checking out.

Snail Mail!

I know, we techno-types have been calling it snail mail for decades. Why send a letter when email is so much faster?

But it's actually true, incertain circumstances, that a snail could in fact deliver the letter faster than the actual mail service:

An IT worker, after receiving a letter on January 3 that was sent on December 20 as priority mail, calculated that a snail would have made it even faster to his home than the letter.

Daily Gazeta Wyborcza said Michal Szybalski calculated that it took 294 hours for the letter to arrive at his home. He also said the distance between his home and the sender was 11.1 kilometers.

Given the distance and the time, the speed of the letter was 0.03775 kilometers per hour. Szybalski calculated that a garden snail travels at around 0.048 kilometers per hour.

Now all we've got to do is work out how to get a uniform and a mail bag onto the little critters....

Oh, and stop them eating the glue off the stamps.

UK Credit Cards

Now for something a little different, directed more at our UK readership than anyone else.

We all know that the are hundreds, if not thousands, of varations of credit cards forced upon us all the time. Annual fee, no annual fee, zero interest transfers, lower rates on balances, points mkae prizes cards: th list of alternatives is endless. But, of course, that leaves us with the problem of which credit card (or cards) to actually use. You don't want to apply for a credit card if someone else is offering you a better deal now, do you?

For example, if you were thinking of switching cards you would want to research all about interest free credit cards, rather than having to pay on a balance transfer, wouldn't you? And you certainly don't want to take the first offer that appears through your letter box.

Fortunately there is a solution. Click through any of those links and you'll be taken to a site which aids you in comparing all of the different offers and thus enables you to makethe right decision for you.

Turkmenbashi Bashed

The last ruler of Turkmenistan was a Grade A, primo nutcase. Not content with simply stealing all the money and building statues of himself everywhere, he banned Turkmen women from marrying abroad, renamed one of the months of the year after his mother, generally drove the place even further into oppression and poverty (and after the Soviet rule, that was tough) and in what was perhaps the least objectionable of his rulings, banned the circus and the opera.

Turkmenistan will end its seven-year ban on opera and the circus introduced by the Caspian nation's former eccentric leader, state media reported.

Saparmurat Niyazov, who cultivated an elaborate personality cult during his 21-year rule, died in late 2006 of a heart attack. He banned opera, ballet and the circus, saying they are "alien" to Turkmen culture.

The new leader, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has sought to promote a softer image for the gas-rich nation bordering Iran -- and reversed some of Niyazov's most eccentric policies.

Late Sunday, state television announced his plans to reopen an opera house, resume circus shows and build a cinema in the capital Ashgabat.

OK, wonderful, he's dead and they're changing policies. Unfortunately, the poverty remains but they will now be allowed to see fat birds warbling and clowns. An advance, if not all that much of one.

Wedding Photography

It's not all that often that someone comes up with a truly new idea in something as old as wedding photography but iTheeSnap.com has actually managed it. It's not just a new idea either, it's looks like an entirely crackingly good one.

The last new idea in wedding photography was the idea of putting disposable cameras on all of the tables. Over and above the official photos, there would thus be a huge seris of informal snaps, you know the sort of thing: the bridesmaid getting to know the ushers really rather well, the darling neice geting at the champagne, all the normal things that happen at weddings. The problem is, whiole the newly weds get these all developed, they never actually do anything else with them. Only the official photos end up being spread around friends and family.

This is where iTheeSnap.com comes in and as I say, I think it's an exxcellent advance in wedding photography . All of those disposabloe cameras are collected, all the pictures taken are developed (ofcourse!) and then they're uploaded and a secure digital album on hte web is created. Thus sharing wedding photos is as simplae as emailing someone the URL.

An excellent idea and one where I wish them every luck: they deserve to do well with it.

Disclosure Policy.

Banning Haggis

Why, I mean, really, why? Why try to get haggis unbanned?

Scotland is considering lobbying the United States to lift a ban on haggis, hoping to boost sales of the sheep-stomach-based national dish.

The U.S. banned imports of Scottish haggis after Britain's outbreak of mad cow disease, which is linked to the human brain illness Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Scotland's government insist its haggis -- which usually contains the heart, liver and lungs wrapped inside a sheep's stomach lining -- is safe and wants the ban lifted.

Put aside the stupidity of the US response in the first place: mad cow disease affected cows, haggis is supposedly made from sheep.

But the real problem isn't that, nor the fact that haggis itself is entirely disgusting. It's that haggis isn't in fact made from sheep at all. It's made, as the name suggests, from hte haggis, a rare animal. It has legs longer on one side than the other so that it can run around hillsides very quickly. What makes it so rare is that males and females normally have the longer legs on opposite sides, meaning that meeting for long enough to form any meaningful relationship is difficult: thus leading to their rarity.

Quite why the Scottish Government wants to increase the hunting of such an endangered creature no one is quite sure.

Free Credit Card Machines

One of the most annoying things about trying to set up a retail operation is that most customers now want to spend their money by credit or debit card. OK, well, that's not annoying: but having to pay for the equipment you need to take the cards is. It can be quite a chunk of change, too, just when you don't need it: before you open and when you're obviously the most stetched for cash.

However, this has now changed for Total Merchant Services (TNS) has woken up to the competitive advantage they can get by advancing the machine to the new merchant: that's right, they'll provide the credit card machine for free. Obviously, for them, this works, as it gets your loyalty: and clearly, it works for you because you don't have to buy the credit card machine . All in all it looks like a good deal. Check it out.

Disclosure Policy.

Fu**in' Australians

Quite literally so:

Two in three Australian travelers are either members of the notorious Mile High Club or would like to be a member, a survey showed Monday.

Asked if they would consider a mid-air sexual encounter, almost half of 1,110 people surveyed wanted an adventure, while 12 percent already had mile-high membership wings.

"People are obviously looking for more stimulating entertainment than a movie or a CD when traveling by plane," Totaltravel.com global marketing manager Paul Fisher said.

Well, whether it's more stimulating than watching a movie is really rather down to who you're doing it with: certainly it doesn't usually take as long. But 12% already claim to be members? I'm surprised that 12% of Austalians have ever even been on an airplane....

As to my own membership or not....well, I've usually flown with my wife, which makes the CD of somewhat greater interest than it would to those who fly unaccompanied.

Visiting New Zealand

Of course, everyone wants to be like their parent sin one way or another but one of the ways I want to emulate mine is to take an extended trip to New Zealand. We've got a large extended family over there (including one distantish cousin who was actually an All Black) so it would be really rather nice to go over and see them all.

As well, of course, as wanting to see the country itself, for it's supposed to be gorgeous, as the photos show.

OK, well, getting there: it's a long way away from anywhere else at all, so it's not somewhere you'd go for a weekend. Better to go for a real trip, 6 weeks or so, and make the most of the travel.

That also means that it's not sensible to just go to one place: so here's some guidance as to the major cities and where you might stay in them: New Zealand Hotels, Auckland Hotels, Wellington Hotels, Christchurch Hotels.

I've been lucky, in that I do actually have the money to go: what I don't have is the time. Rather need this travelling internet stuff to get better, perhaps ina year or two I'll be able to travel and work at the same time. Then, I'm off!

Bad Credit Offers

We've all dreaded it at some point or another and far too many of us have suffered from it: bad credit. The thing is, knowing how bad the effects of it can be, what can we do about it?

Well, strangely, the best thing you can in fact do is to borrow more money but to make sure that you pay it back, on time, this time. The other reason to look at bad credit offers is that you might actually need to borrow money for another good reason, like a new (er) car or something.

So, if you do have bad credit, you might want to click through that link above. That's a site which can help you to decide which offer might be the best one to take, rather than simply relying upon the first one to come in the mail being best for you.

You might also be interested in having a look at your credit report. You'll be surprised how often bad credit is the result of a mistake that's been made in the system rather than something directly your fault.

And even if it is, there's a very useful section describing all about credit repair. All in all it's a very useful site and one well worth checking out.

Dumb Criminals

Good grief! If you're going to do something illegal it really is quite sensible for you not to actually film it, you know? It provides the authorities with the evidence they need to convict you, so it really is a very silly thing to do indeed.

A 19-year-old Chinese student recorded the killing and dismembering of her married lover by her boyfriend, local media said on Friday.

The second-year student in the southwestern province of Yunnan, her boyfriend and another male accomplice had all been arrested after the killing last month, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.

The victim, 39, was a married manager at a local highway and bridge building company, the newspaper said.

The girl, who was from a struggling family in the capital Beijing and met the victim as a nightclub hostess, filmed as he was killed and his body was cut into "hundreds of pieces," the newspaper said.

"The dismembering was both out of hatred and aimed at making the body unrecognisable," the report said.

Given the way things work in China at present those three will now all be shot.In the back of the head. And possibly, if they still do it, their families billed for the bullets used.

And all because they had to have a filmed record of what they were doing. Stupid, stupid.

TasteVine

Now this is pretty interesting, using the idea of social networking to find out which sorts of wine you might enjoy. It's not actually social networking, as they don't suggest that you interact directly with the other people, but it's using the same basic idea.

You go onto the site and register, then you provide the details of the sort of wines that you enjoy. You might say merlot, or chardonnay, (or even red or white wine) or perhaps you'd be a little more picky and say "vinho verde" or white port.

So what the site then does is goes through the other users of the site and sees who shares some or all of your tastes. Then, and here's the interesting bit, it then recommends back to you the other wines that those people with similar tastes to you enjoy.

So what you get is the accumulated wisdom of brands, years, wine types and so on of those who seem to have a similar palate to yourself.

A very interesting idea actually. How well it will work in hte long term will depend almost entirely upon how many join the site. The more do so, usefulness will rise exponentially.

Those Smoking Bans Explained.

One of the wonders of recent years has been the way in which smoking bans in pubs and restaurants have been imposed across Europe. The authorities have almost never taken the view that it is up to individuals, and they've usually simply banned smoking indoors to the detriment of the civil liberties of customers and proprietors. China might show us why:

Beijing's first smoke-free restaurant chain faces going out of business after its customers deserted it in droves after the ban was enforced, state media reported on Friday.

The Chinese are the world's most enthusiastic smokers, with a growing market of more than 350 million, making it a magnet for cigarette companies and a focus of international health concerns.

The occupancy rate at Meizhou Dongpo, a chain serving the spicy fare of southwest Sichuan province, had dropped to "about 80 percent of that enjoyed by other restaurants across the street" after it banned smoking in October, the China Daily quoted its manager as saying.

Given a choice, the customers would rather go somewhere where they can smoke.

Of course, to liberals like us, this shows that the bans are wrong: if people want to do something, they should be allowed to do so. Unfotunately, our rulers think differently: if we want to do what they think we shouldn't. we must be banned from doing it.

Sightseeing in Berlin

Despite the fact that it's nearly twenty years since the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and the way in which hundreds of billions of $ have been spent on makingthe East look better than it did, it's still worth going there to see what socialism accomplished. The incredible feat of making Germans poor. The East of the city is still encircled by stack a prole worker apartments which we in the west wouldn't house rabbits in, let alone human beings.

Well, that's if you're a political and economic geek like I am. more rational people might want to take one of the sightseeing tours in Berlin. It is an amazing city, after all.

You might also want to click through here to find out about accomodation in Berlin. It's not the easiest of cities to find somewhere reasonable to stay so you probably will need that help.

Disclosure Policy.

Snakes on a Plane!

Yes, yes, we've heard about life imitating art, but this is ridiculous:

Vietnam has seized more than a ton of ratsnakes found aboard a Vietnam Airlines flight from Bangkok, the second time in about a month such snakes were found in air cargo to Vietnam, state media said on Friday.

The snakes -- scientific name Ptyas Mucosus and a protected species -- were found in more than 60 boxes that arrived in Hanoi's Noi Bai airport on Thursday, the Vietnam News Agency quoted officials as saying.

The point being that teh Samuel L. Jackson movie, "Snakes on a Plane", was not art, it was tripe, bubblegum that amused fo the first 15 minutes or so and then grew increasingly tedious.

So, err, universe? I'm afraid you've got to shape up out there. If you're going to imitate the cocaine driven maunderings of a screen writer's mind, could you at least do so with adecent script? Like Butch Cassidy or something?